Several spoilers for the first half of Campaign 1 A collection of moments from Critical Role when Grog shows off his intelligence. Please tag spoilers in your comments! All clips belong to Critical Role: / @criticalrole
Man i know Travis got tired of being a dumb character but he was smart enough to play it so well the entry gentry and Math is Mathis lines had me laughing so hard.
Its not that Travis got tired of playing the "dumb guy". Everyone changed it up for campaign 2. But Grog was the first time Travis ever played dnd and, because he didn't know anything about the game, wanted to play something that required no thought to play.
I remember him talking about how challenging it was when he switched to Fjord because "with Grog I could kind of just go full applesauce brain," which is a term I love and continue to use to this day.
The eagle transformation was funny. “Suddenly...you have feathers! What the shit?! And-“ *long pause as Matt looks at the stats and almost busts out laughing* “You’re smarter! Because giant eagles have an intelligence of 8!
I always thought it was a funny thing that Grog was in charge of the bag of holding. Then I remembered, his specialties are shapes, colors, and shiny things. The perfect person to keep track of the bag's contents.
The fact that he kept tabs on literally everything for years!!! He kept perfect track of everything to the point where he says how long stuff had been in the bag when he gets it all out after defeating the Frigid Doom
i think my favorite joke about grogs intelligence is how grog doesnt know numbers and how the amount of numbers and what numbers he knows changes everytime
Huge cudos to Travis for playing an INT 6 character so well. Playing a stupid character can get really annoying after a while, but he stuck to his guns really good.
I play a negative intelligence Goliath barbarian that’s actually a circus performer that believes he’s a halfling. Believe me when I say there’s nothing funner than playing a lovable moron. It doesn’t matter if you fail your intelligence rolls, fail your wisdom saves, or even fail a strength or attack role. Every outcome is a chance to roleplay something fun. And the party loves it when suddenly the 8ft tall pile of muscles gets all the best investigation roles and becomes Sherlock Holmes. Or rolls high animal handling and makes a wyrmling his beloved pet while the wizard fails
For real, Vox Machina should look for that item exclusively for Grog's retirement lol he's already shown an interest in learning. Imagine professional writer Grog, helping Scanlan chronicle VM's adventures!
My favorite Grog moment is when the party is fighting a giant gray ooze. Travis knows that hitting it with melee will cause Grog to take acid damage. However and i quote, "Grog wouldn't know that, he's an idiot." and proceeds to continue to fight the ooze in melee combat.
I don't know how many times I've rewatched Grog negotiating for the potion, and i still cry of laughter every time. Laura saying "you're such a dick" is the cherry on top of the cake.
I imagine that whenever he has a stroke of knowledge it’s like when the little DvD bouncing thing hits a corner. The Nat 20s are it hitting twice in a row.
Props to Travis for always keeping a tab on what Grog wouldn’t understand. It can be difficult to play a character with super low intelligence properly, it takes someone who’s actually quite smart to do it right. The only time he kinda betrayed this was during the Kevdak showdown, used a few big words and such, but he had a lot of stuff on his plate in that arc, so I don’t blame him for slipping up a bit.
Whenever he talks to his herd he speaks more intensely and properly. Someone made a theory that whenever he talks to them he’s talking in Goliath, so he can speak much clearer and knows what to say
@@dragonfire4869 I personally like that... it reminds me of a similar headcanon with the Heavy Weapons Guy from TF2- English isn't his first language so he speaks it pretty broken, but the idea is that he's very eloquent and well-versed in Russian and even has a PhD in Russian literature. It's a pretty wholesome concept.
"Did you tell her you're her dad yet?" may be my favourite Grog moment, because it was both perfectly thematically correct and the table got the joke at different times so you can see all of them realise.
Every time I watch clips of Travis being an absolute goofus maloofus, the thought occurs to me, "This man is literally the CEO of this entire operation."
i feel like what works so well with Grog is that Travis leans into Grog being an idiot so much. I see a lot of people playing low int or wis characters, they use their character's stats as an excuse to do what they want using the "my character's an idiot excuse," until something cool happens and they need to be able to do what they want the character to be able to do/figure out. But Travis leans so hard into the Grog is an idiot for the failures and the Triumphs so it works so goddamn well
It's so interesting to play a low int character. I have a Goliath cleric with 18 wisdom and I think like 7 intelligence. I just play it as not to smart but goeswith his gut on just about anything. I.e. getting piss drunk before trying to convince a powerful person to help the group. She said she didn't trust us, so I said well fuck, casted zone of truth, well no reason not to trust us now!
@@WonTonSamurai Low intelligence Barbarians can be so much fun. All the player needs to do is remove the filter, let whatever flow out whenever and just not think ahead.
Talisen: What would vex do!? Travis: *thinking* she will kill be but Grog isn't the smartest goliath in a bunch Laura *perhaps knowing this is coming* premptive death glares Travis: *makes a deliberately bad trade in his favor because grog doesn't know any better* happy husband noises Jokes aside i respect this man's dedication to grogs stupidity And my enjoyment XD
That's one of the things that makes Critical Role so good. Its always fine to just make a self-insert character to roleplay yourself into the character, but a lot of the best organic stories come from trying to roleplay as someone else. If all the cast did was just the voices, it wouldn't have nearly as much impact and lasting power but just a gimmick that would have gotten old years ago. You can argue that the cast members still tend to typecast the personalities of the characters they play, but the characters still make sense and it is the little in-character moments that turn these campaigns from being standard gaming fare to a big story world that I would not be surprised at all is written down in novel form at some point.
Hahahaha! "Mathis?" Next character I make I am naming Mathis to honour that moment. So incredibly brilliant and quick-witted, outstanding entertainment!
My girlfriend's DnD Elven Ranger is the funniest character I've ever played with. She's been LETHAL in combat since level 1. A true harbinger of death. She speaks 6 languages. Can't read any of them.
@@josefzalusky7307 she plays it with this kind of childlike naivety, where she takes almost everything at face value. She's also tamed a bear who travels with us that I've made leather armour for
Yeah in the campaign wrap up talks Machina they said nothing actually happened, the nymph just made some moves to make Grog uncomfortable but nothing more
lol so true, but it's a testament to how far they've come in production quality. Less audio issues, bigger set, more storage for miniatures, more office space. Marisha's backstage tour was super enlightening.
In our campaign, my friend's barbarian has an intelligence of 6, and my bard has a strength of 6, so its become a running joke that he is as smart as i am strong lmao. And our dm likes to quote Grog's line at us now and again
She was a illiterate daughter of a groundskeeper at a Magical academy and learned spells through observation. I had to roll % everytime I cast to see how effective it was, but my dm was great about it and let me have some success. It was a blast and everybody at game was enjoying seeing me fail and trying to go with it.
If only grog was more persistent. It would be really funny if when bartering they get an offer of like 1500, and vex tells grog they should try to get 1200, and grog would just stare at them threateningly holding his ax until he heard 1200
